We’ve spent the last year-and-a-half looking into the theology of Open Theism. Though the belief system has been around for hundreds of years, it began to creep into evangelicalism during the past several decades. You can look back at earlier parts of this series to learn more about the history and beliefs of Open Theists or download the free eBook we will link to at the end of this article.
Scholarship
I want to end our series on a scholarly note. Scholars are academic experts who excel in a particular field of study. I am a career journalist and interviewed hundreds of scholars from many fields of expertise for my stories. I learned that seasoned and well-credentialed scholars often take different points of view on identical topics with access to the same information.
That is also true of theological scholars. They use the same Bible, yet come to different interpretations and conclusions about identical topics. Classical theists view God one way and Open Theists view God another way. Which view is correct? That has been the primary point of this series. Can anyone put God in a theological box?
God has charged each of us with the work of correctly interpreting His Word — “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).
As we bring this series to a close, I’d like to share some of the writings of scholars who oppose the teachings of Open Theism. May we be diligent in our search for the truth. May we not need to be ashamed.
Norman Geisler
Dr. Norman Geisler was a Christian leader, educator and prolific writer. He served as president of the Evangelical Theological Society when Open Theism was becoming an issue within evangelical circles. He was also founder of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and the International Society of Christian Apologetics. You can read more about his many academic accomplishments here.
I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Geisler at an Apologetics conference many years ago. His work in Christian Apologetics was of special interest to me. We talked for some time after his presentation and he was kind to continue the discussion through an email exchange that lasted a few years. Our discussion included Open Theism (Neotheism), Emerging Churches, Progressive Christianity, and other groups of mutual concern. Dr. Geisler passed away in 2019.
Dr. Geisler wrote several books and articles opposing Open Theism including Creating God in the Image of Man? The New “Open” View of God — Neotheism’s Dangerous Drift (Bethany House, 1997). He used the term “Neotheism” for Open Theism.
The nature of God is the most fundamental issue in all theology.
It’s what theology is all about. On it stands or falls every other major doctrine. From its inception, orthodox Christianity has been uncompromisingly theistic. Recently, a new view has seriously challenged this venerable history. In fact, this view claims to be orthodox but zealously desires to make major changes in the classical theistic view. Several proponents of this view, including Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker, and David Basinger, have collaborated on a volume titled The Openness of God. Other Christian thinkers share similar views or have expressed sympathy for this position, including Greg Boyd, Stephen Davis, Thomas Morris, and Richard Swinburne.
Neotheists have variously labeled their view “the openness of God” or “free will theism.” Others have called this new form of theism a form of process theology or panentheism because of its important similarities to this position.3 Yet it seems more appropriate to call it neotheism for several reasons. First, it has significant differences from the panentheism of Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorn, and company.4 Neotheism, like classical theism, affirms many of the essential attributes of God, including infinity, necessity, ontological independence, transcendence, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Likewise, it shares with traditional theism the belief in ex nihilo creation and direct divine supernatural intervention in the world. Since process theology denies all these, it seems unfair to list neotheism as a subspecies of that view.
On the other hand, since significant differences exist between the new theism and classical theism, neither does neotheism fit comfortably in the latter category. For example, neotheism denies God’s foreknowledge of future free acts and, as a consequence, God’s complete sovereignty over human events. These deviations from two millennia of Christian theology are serious enough to deserve another name, as well as to arouse concern. It seems appropriate, then, to call it neotheism. NEOTHEISM: The Dangers of Making God in Our Image
Dr. Geisler resigned from the Evangelical Theological Society soon after much of the debate about Open Theism (2003). As part of his resignation statement, Dr. Geisler wrote – “Open Theists hold views contrary to what the Founders meant by the doctrinal basis of ETS, and they have just received strong approval of the Society.” He also wrote:
But Open Theists confessed both God and the Bible err in the sense understood by the framers of this doctrinal statement, namely, they believe that the Bible affirms some things that are not factually correct. John Sanders agrees that there are unconditional prophesies that go unfulfilled. And Pinnock confessed that Chronicles gives exaggerated numbers that do not correspond with the facts. But these count as errors according to the understanding of the ETS founding fathers. All the living founders expressed this in writing to ETS and those not living have expressed this same view in their writings. Why I Resigned from The Evangelical Theological Society (2003), Dr. Norman Geisler
You may also find these articles and books of interest in your research:
Open Theists and Inerrancy: Clark Pinnock on the Bible and God
Beware of Philosophy: A Warning to Biblical Scholars
Chosen But Free: A Balanced View Of God’s Sovereignty And Free Will
The Battle for God: Responding to the Challenge of Neotheism
Bruce Ware
Dr. Bruce Ware is currently a professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has taught at other seminaries and also served as president of the Evangelical Theological Society. Dr. Ware was a key figure in the ETS debate about Open Theism and wrote an important book on the subject more than 20 years ago.
If open theism is correct, we must acknowledge that the openness God, when compared to orthodoxy’s view of God, is quite deficient in his understanding. It follows that his wisdom and providential control are greatly affected. God not only learns what happens moment by moment (as we do), but he also realizes moment by moment which of his beliefs about the future have been wrong. Yes, the God of open theism is mistaken about much. Furthermore, since he is so mistaken in many cases, we must conclude that God would often be filled with regret over his own past decisions. Just how often this is the case, we do not fully know. But it stands to reason that, since God cannot know any free decision, choice, or action, many times he is faced with some turn in events that takes him by surprise and reveals to him that his thoughts about the future and his past decisions were, disappointingly, erroneous and misguided.
And what do we make of God’s providential oversight of the unfolding of human history? Deficient knowledge and wisdom surely mean that neither we nor God can be certain about just what will happen in the end. Will God succeed in fulfilling His goals? Will history move in the direction he hopes it will? Are God’s predictions and promises sure? The only answer open theists can give to these questions is that they are hopeful that God will somehow pull it off … In short, the God of open theism suffers greatly from this lack of knowledge and it affects his plans, wise counsel, predictive ability, and providential control of history. God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism, Crossway, 2000
If you would like to do your own research into the problem of Open Theism, I recommend you add Dr. Ware’s book to your reading list along with some of these articles and videos:
A God Who Guesses and Makes Mistakes? Open Theism’s View of God (2002 Staley Lecture)
Defining Evangelicalism’s Boundaries Theologically: Is Open Theism Evangelical?
Dr. Bruce A. Ware: Challenging Voice to Open Theism
John Frame
Dr. John Frame is Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy Emeritus at the Reformed Theological Seminary. He also wrote a book about Open Theism within a year of Dr. Ware’s book. It’s titled No Other God: A Response to Open Theism (P & R Publishing, 2001). I also recommend Dr. Frame’s book for research on Open Theism.
Several years later, Dr. Frame wrote an article for The Apologetics Study Bible titled Does the Bible Affirm Open Theism? Here are a few thoughts from that article:
Open theists, such as Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, Gregory Boyd, and William Hasker, seek to do justice to the “give and take” in Scripture between God and human beings. For example, in Ex. 32:7-10, God tells Moses he will destroy Israel for worshipping the golden calf and raise up a new nation from Moses himself. Moses intercedes, however, and in verse 14 God “relents.” God also seems to “change his mind” in Isa. 38:1-5, where Isaiah prophecies that King Hezekiah will die, but in response to Hezekiah’s repentance adds fifteen years to his life, and in Jonah 3-4, where God retracts an announcement of judgment in response to Ninevah’s repentance.
From these and other such passages, the open theists infer that God is a temporal being (not “above time” as in much traditional theology), that he changes his mind, that his plans are influenced by creatures, that he sometimes regrets actions that he has performed (as Gen. 6:6), and that he does not have exhaustive knowledge of the future. On their view, God’s regretting and relenting come about because human free decisions are utterly undetermined and unpredictable. So God must adjust his plans to the free choices of human beings.
We should not ignore these “relenting” passages. On the other hand, we should not forget either the pervasive biblical emphasis on God’s sovereign control of the world and his exhaustive knowledge of past, present, and future. God brings about natural events (Psm. 65:9-11, 135:5-7), even apparently random ones (Prov. 16:33). He controls the smallest details of nature (Matt. 10:29-30). He governs human history (Acts 17:26, Isa. 10:5-12, 14:24-27). If someone dies accidentally, it is because “the Lord lets it happen” (Ex. 21:12-13). Contrary to open theism, God brings about human free decisions, even sinful ones (Gen. 45:5-8, Judg. 14:4, 2 Sam. 24, Isa. 44:28, Luke 22:22, Acts 2:23-24, Rev. 17:17). He hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 4:21, 7:3), and others as well (Deut. 2:30, Josh. 11:18-20, 1 Sam. 2:25, 2 Chron. 25:20), for his own purposes (Rom. 9:17). He is also the source of human faith (John 6:37, 44, 65, Eph. 2:4-10, 2 Tim. 1:9, Acts 13:48, 16:14-15, 18:27) and repentance (Zech. 12:10, Acts 5:31, 11:18). So human freedom is not indeterminate as open theists maintain. We are free in that we do what we want to do; but behind our plans and desires are those of God (James 4:13-17).
In general, God “works out everything in conformity to the purpose of his will” (Eph. 1:11; cf. Lam. 3:37-38, Rom. 2:28, 11:33-36). And God cannot fail at anything he seeks to do (Ps. 33:11, 115:3, 135:6, Prov. 21:30, Isa. 14:27, 43:13, 46:10, 55:11, Dan. 4:35, Rev. 3:7). Does the Bible Affirm Open Theism?
You can finish reading the article at the link above or on page 138 of The Apologetics Study Bible (Holman Bible Publishers, 2007, 2012)
Douglas Wilson
Douglas Wilson is a pastor, author and speaker and Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Idaho.
The problems with Open theism lie deeper than most critiques suggest. This book interacts not only with the truth claims of Open theism but also its distorted aesthetic and ethical assumptions that do so much work in that program. Open theists characterize the God of classical Christian theism as a distant, despotic, micromanaging, petty, Mr. Burns sovereign, with little time for nonsense or tissues. They depict the god of Open theism as a nineties sort of guy, ready to enter into new experiences, feel our pain, and link pinkies into an unknown future.
Open theists insist that God has knowledge, but not all knowledge, certainly not knowledge of the future acts of free beings and some statues. Such Open theistic inferences reveal a deep-seated devotion to Enlightenment categories and narrow unpoetic imaginations. Ideas have destinations, and one of the consequences of our trying to read the Scriptures without any poetry in our souls will be the eventual destruction of any possibility of ministering to souls. Just imagine the hymn writer trying to lift up the downcast: “I know not what the future holds, but I know Who also doesn’t know much about it either.”
Contributors to this collection of essays include John MacArthur, John Frame, Peter Leithart, Steve Schlissel, R.C. Sproul, Jr., and Douglas Wilson. Bound Only Once: The Failure of Open Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001)
Roger Nicole
Dr. Roger Nicole was professor emeritus of theology at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. He passed away in 2010.
He was a founding member of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), established in 1949. Dr. Nicole served as Vice President in 1955 and President in 1956.
Nicole initiated charges within ETS against Clarke Pinnock, John Sanders and Greg Boyd which led to the vote that almost ousted Sanders in 2003. Nicole was quoted as saying, “I present this motion with a heavy heart.” Nicole believed that Pinnock, Sanders and Boyd were promoting proposals “incompatible with inerrancy.”
In 2001 Dr. Nicole gave a detailed review of Greg Boyd’s book God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of God. I invite you to read the entire article. Here is his conclusion.
My conclusion is the book does not adequately support the view of the divine ignorance of future decisions of free agents. On the back cover Professor Pinnock calls this “a stunning book.” For once I agree with him, going so far as to call it “stupefying.” God of the Possible is an impossible book.
When in the beginning of the fourth century the whole Western civilization was tottering under the impact of what has been known as “the barbarian invasion,” God raised for the church a great champion of his sovereignty and grace, and Pelagius, the advocate of human independence, was defeated.
When in the sixteenth century the church itself was shaken to its roots by corruption and unbelief, God raised the great Reformers who reasserted the truths of divine sovereignty and justification by faith alone.
Today we live also in perilous times in which intellectual and moral stability is buffeted by the onslaught of neo-paganism and postmodernism. What the church needs are new Augustines, not new Pelagiuses. The movement of the “openness of God” must be defeated. God of the Possible? A Review Article by Roger Nicole
William Lane Craig
Dr. William Lane Craig is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University and Visiting Scholar of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology.
Here are the opening and closing paragraphs from an article Dr. Craig wrote about Open Theism.
When the course of events can go in more than one direction, given present conditions, does God know which way it will go? Open theists deny that God has knowledge of such “future contingents.” They are prompted in large part by an estimable concern to safeguard human and divine freedom. This is a concern that we share. What we do not share with open theists is their conviction that divine foreknowledge must be restricted in order to make the world safe for genuine free agency. God’s foreknowledge, we believe, does not annul what would otherwise have been a free action, and denying foreknowledge does not secure for foreknown actions a freedom that was not otherwise in jeopardy.
‘Wide is the gate and broad the road which leads to ruin, and many there are who enter by it,’ the Lord warned the crowd in Matthew 7:13. We believe that the wide road to open theism, and its associated short cut, similarly leads to logical and metaphysical (not to mention theological) ruin. Perils of the Open Road, 2013
Millard Erickson
Dr. Millard Erickson is Distinguished Professor of Theology at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He has written extensively about Christian Theology, including opposition to those who deviate from it. His book, Truth or Consequences: The Promise Perils of Postmodernism, was a 2002 Christianity Today Book of the Year. He addressed Open Theism the following year in What Does God Know and When Does He Know It? The Current Controversy over Divine Foreknowledge.
The following resolution from 2000 is lengthy, but well worth the read to grasp some of the reasons behind the Open Theism controversy. Here are some of the points that may help your understanding:
A seriously defective view of God, known as “openness theology,” is spreading among evangelicals. One element of this theology is the conviction that God does not infallibly foreknow all that shall come to pass. This view of God’s foreknowledge is presently espoused by at least one professor at Bethel College, Greg Boyd. He writes, In the Christian view God knows all of reality – everything there is to know. But to assume He knows ahead of time how every person is going to freely act assumes that each person’s free activity is already there to know – even before he freely does it! But it’s not. If we have been given freedom, we create the reality of our decisions by making them. And until we make them, they don’t exist. Thus, in my view at least, there simply isn’t anything to know until we make it there to know. So God can’t foreknow the good or bad decisions of the people He creates until He creates these people and they, in turn, create their decisions (Letters from A Skeptic [Colorado Springs: Chariot Victor Publishing, 1994], p. 30, italics added).
In his latest book, God of the Possible (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2000), Boyd repeats the claim:
…the Bible depicts God as not knowing future free actions, on the one hand, while also depicting God as knowing all of reality, on the other. This entails that future free decisions do not exist (except as possibilities) for God to know until free agents make them (p. 120).
No, it is typical of a cluster of theologians espousing “openness theology” (a term that Dr. Boyd uses of his own view, distinguishing it from Calvinism and Arminianism). One prominent spokesman for this view is Clark Pinnock of McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario. He wrote in 1990,
Decisions not yet made do not exist anywhere to be known even by God. They are potential – yet to be realized but not yet actual. God can predict [but not foreknow with certainty] a great deal of what we will choose to do, but not all of it, because some of it remains hidden in the mystery of human freedom. . . . God too faces possibilities in the future, and not only certainties. God too moves into a future not wholly known (“From Augustine to Arminius: A Pilgrimage in Theology,” in: The Grace of God, the Will of Man: A Case for Arminianism, ed. by Clark Pinnock [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990], pp. 25-26).
Another open theist put it like this:
Indeed, to say that God is ignorant of future creaturely decisions is like saying that God is deaf to silence. It makes no sense, because before they exist such decisions are nothing for God to be ignorant of (Richard Rice, “Divine Foreknowledge and Free-Will Theism,” in Pinnock, ed., The Grace of God, The Will of Man, p. 129).
Dr. Boyd writes, “…this debate about God’s knowledge…is not really about God’s knowledge at all. It is rather a debate about the nature of the future…. open theists could (and should) affirm that God knows the future perfectly. It’s just that they understand the future as it is now to include genuine possibilities” (God of the Possible, pp. 15, 16). Notice: this seems to raise the question of the “nature of the future.” But that is not really what is happening. Rather, Dr. Boyd virtually redefines the future as the present. He says, God knows “the future as it is now” (emphasis added). But “the future as it is now” is no longer the future. It is the present. But to know something that is NOW is not foreknowledge, but just knowledge. So what openness theology really claims is that God has exhaustive knowledge of the present, not the future.
Here’s the problem: In ordinary language “foreknowledge” does not mean “knowledge of what is now,” but rather “knowledge of what will come to pass.” The nature of what will come to pass is not the issue. The issue is: Whatever and however the future comes to pass, will God have known it infallibly before it happened.
Harmful false teaching does not generally originate in people who are unqualified to teach and lead people to Christ. In Acts 20:30 Paul reminds the elders of the church at Ephesus that “Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.” Even someone as great and godly as the apostle Peter needed to be rebuked by Paul in Galatians 2:14, “I said to Peter in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?’” Serious and damaging error generally starts in the teaching of an otherwise sound and helpful leader.
The story of churches and schools that have left their founding Biblical vision points to the shortsightedness of putting personality above truth. The history of such defection is a strong historical warning not to put piety and effectiveness above simple conformity to Scripture when a particular truth is in question. It is a remarkable and wonderful thing for all of us that God will use us in all our imperfections and mistakes. We would be hopeless without this grace. But God’s willingness to use millions of Christians who cannot sign our Affirmation of Faith is no sign that God endorses all their teaching. Nor should we conclude that the Affirmation of Faith should be as inclusive as God’s willingness to turn evil for good.
It is not our concern to minimize the effectiveness of Dr. Boyd. Our concern is: Does God foreknow infallibly all that shall come to pass? Is this truth important enough to be part of what defines us? We believe it is. And we believe that the very strengths that make Dr. Boyd so effective now, will also serve to spread his error, which, in the long run, will undo much of the good he has done. Resolution on the Foreknowledge of God: Reasons & Rationale
You may also find this book helpful:
God the Father Almighty: A Contemporary Exploration of the Divine Attributes
Wayne Grudem
Dr. Wayne Grudem is Professor of Theology and Biblical Studies at Phoenix Seminary in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of more than 20 books and was the General Editor for the ESV Study Bible.
The update version of Dr. Grudem’s popular Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine includes a critique of Open Theism.
Dr. Grudem was also a contributor to Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (Crossway, 2003). Grudem wrote Chapter 10, When, Why, and For What Should We Draw New Boundaries?
R. K. McGregor Wright
Dr. R.K. McGregor Wright was the founder and co-director of Friendship International, an outreach ministry to international students and visiting scholars. He was also founder and co-director of the Aquila and Priscilla Study Center. He passed away in 2012.
Dr. Wright is the author of No Place for Sovereignty: What’s Wrong with Freewill Theism (IVP Academic, 1996).
John MacArthur
Dr. John MacArthur is the long-time Pastor-Teacher of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley California. He is also an author, conference speaker, Chancellor of The Master’s University and Seminary, and the featured teacher with the Grace to You media ministry.
I had the privilege of eating lunch with Dr. John McArthur after he spoke at a Moody Bible School Pastor’s Conference in the late 1970s. We talked about the state of evangelicalism and the importance of sound doctrine among pastors.
Dr. McArthur addressed Open Theism in 2001 in response to an article by Robert Brow:
More than a decade ago a controversial article in Christianity Today heralded the rise of open theism. The article, ‘Evangelical Megashift,’ was written by Robert Brow, a prominent Canadian theologian. Brow described a radical change looming on the evangelical horizon—a ‘megashift’ toward ‘new-model’ thinking, away from classical theism (which Brow labeled ‘old-model’ theology). What the article outlined was the very movement that today is known as the ‘open’ view of God, or ‘open theism.’
Although Brow himself is a vocal advocate of open theism, his 1990 article neither championed nor condemned the megashift. In it, Brow sought merely to describe how the new theology was radically changing the evangelical concept of God by proposing new explanations for biblical concepts such as divine wrath, God’s righteousness, judgment, the atonement—and just about every aspect of evangelical theology. The Master’s Seminary Journal
Dr. McArthur summed up a primary position of Open Theism:
Gone are all vestiges of divine severity. God has been toned down and tamed. According to new-model theology, God is not to be thought of as righteously indignant over His creatures’ disobedience. In fact, Brow’s article was subtitled ‘Why you may not have heard about wrath, sin, and hell recently.’ He characterized the God of new-model theology as a kinder, gentler, more user-friendly deity.
Indeed, one of the main goals of the open-theism megashift seems to be to eliminate the fear of the Lord completely. According to Brow, ‘No one would deny that it is easier to relate to a God perceived as kindly and loving.’
Of course, the God of old-model theology is also unceasingly gracious, merciful, and loving (a fact one would not be able to glean from the gross caricature new-model advocates like to paint when they describe “old-model orthodoxy”). But old-model theologians—with Scripture on their side— teach that there is more to the divine character than beneficence. God is also holy, righteous, and angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11). He is fierce in His indignation against sin (cf. Ps 78:49; Isa 13:9-13; Zeph 3:8). Fear of Him is the very essence of true wisdom (Job 28:28; Ps 111:10; Prov 1:7; 9:10; 15:33). And ‘the terror of the Lord’ is even a motive for our evangelism (2 Cor 5:11). ‘Our God is a consuming fire’ (Heb 12:29; cf. Deut 4:24), and ‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’ (Heb 10:31).
Nonetheless, open theists are determined to eliminate or explain away every feature of the divine character except those that are instantly “perceived as kindly and loving.” They want nothing to do with a God who demands to be feared. Their theology aims to construct a manageable deity, a god who is “easier to relate to”—a quasi-divine being who has been divested of all the features of divine glory and majesty that might provoke any fear or dread in the creature. Instead, they have made Him into a kindly, non-threatening, heavenly valet.
Dr. McArthur addressed the major problem with Open Theism concerning the payment for sin (the Atonement). This is where Open Theists may have entered into a position similar to the 16th century heresy of Socinianism.
Above all, the new-model god never demands any payment for sin as a condition of forgiveness. According to the new-model view, if Christ suffered for our sins, it was only in the sense that he “absorb[ed] our sin and its consequences”—certainly not that He received any divinely-inflicted punishment on our behalf at the cross. He merely became a partaker with us in the human problem of pain and suffering. (After all, earthly ‘pain and suffering’ are just about the worst consequences of sin new-model theologians can imagine.)
The most disturbing line in Robert Brow’s article is an almost incidental, throwaway remark near the end, in which he states that according to new-model theology, ‘the cross was not a judicial payment,’ but merely a visible, space-time expression of how Christ has always suffered because of our sin.
In other words, according to new-model theology, the atoning work of Christ was not truly substitutionary; He made no ransom-payment for sin; no guilt was imputed to Him; nor did God punish Him as a substitute for sinners. None of His sufferings on the cross were administered by God. Instead, according to the new model, atonement means that our sins are simply ‘forgiven’ out of the bounty of God’s loving tolerance; our relationship with God is normalized; and Christ ‘absorbed the consequences’ of our forgiveness (which presumably means He suffered the indignity and shame that go with enduring an offense).
As I wrote in a previous part of this series, Open Theism doesn’t comport with reality – the reality of Scripture. Even though Dr. McArthur wrote his article 30 years ago, it continues to be an excellent source of understanding about the problems of Open Theism, especially as it pertains to the Gospel of Christ.
The rise of open theism is a grave threat to the cause of the true gospel. May God raise up a new generation of evangelical warriors with the courage and conviction to contend for the truth of substitutionary atonement.
John Piper
Dr. John Piper is the Chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is also a pastor and author. Dr. Piper was also a contributor to Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (Crossway, 2003).
The heart of open theism is the conviction that humans and angels can be morally responsible only if they have ultimate self-determination–and have it to the degree that their self-determination rules out God’s ability to render or see any of their future free acts as certain. Therefore, open theism’s most obvious departure from historic Christianity is its denial of the exhaustive, definite foreknowledge of God. Beyond the Bounds, Foreward
Here is an article about Open Theism you may also find helpful:
Open theism may help conceal deep idolatry in the soul. One of the great needs of our souls is to know if we treasure anything on earth more than we treasure Christ. Treasuring anyone or anything more than Christ is idolatry. Paul said in Colossians 3:5, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you . . . covetousness, which is idolatry.” If covetousness is idolatry, then desiring earthly things more than we desire God is idolatry. That means we must be more satisfied in Christ and his wisdom than we are in all our relationships and accomplishments and possessions on earth.
Now how does Open Theism help us conceal from ourselves the idolatries in our souls? It ascribes ultimate causality for many calamities and evils to Satan or the autonomous will of man, not finally to the all-disposing counsel and wisdom of God above and behind Satan. For example, Greg Boyd says:
When an individual inflicts pain on another individual, I do not think we can go looking for “the purpose of God” in the event. . . . I know Christians frequently speak about ‘the purpose of God’ in the midst of a tragedy caused by someone else. . . . But this I regard to simply be a piously confused way of thinking (Letters from a Skeptic [Colorado Springs: Chariot Victor Publishing, 1994], p. 47).
Similarly, John Sanders writes:
God does not have a specific divine purpose for each and every occurrence of evil. . . . When a two-month-old child contracts a painful, incurable bone cancer that means suffering and death, it is pointless evil. The Holocaust is pointless evil. The rape and dismemberment of a young girl is pointless evil. The accident that caused the death of my brother was a tragedy. God does not have a specific purpose in mind for these occurrences (The God Who Risks [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998], p. 262).
If not “the purpose of God,” what then is ultimate? Either man’s will which is ultimately “self-determining” and can even surprise God (as Open Theists believe), or the will of an evil spirit which is also ultimately “self-determining.” For example, after admitting that “God can sometimes use the evil wills of personal beings, human or divine, to his own ends,” Boyd then says, “This by no means entails that there is a divine will behind every activity of an evil spirit” (God at War [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997], p. 154, cf. 57, 141). “A self-determining, supremely evil being rules the world” (p. 54). “The ultimate reason behind all evil in the world is found in Satan, not God” (p. 54, my italics).
How does this worldview help us conceal the idolatry of our soul? It works like this. Open Theism denies that God is the final, purposive disposer of all things (Job 2:10; Amos 3:6; Rom. 8:28; Eph. 1:11). Therefore it asserts that God’s wisdom does not hold final sway (Rom. 11:33-36), and thus God is not fulfilling a plan for our good in all our miseries (Jeremiah 29:11; 32:40). Open Theism implies, therefore, that we should not think about the wisdom of God’s purpose in causing or permitting our calamities. In other words, Open Theism discourages us from asking what sanctifying purpose God may have in ordaining that our misery come about. How Open Theism Helps Us Conceal Our Hidden Idolatries
I invite you to read the entire article.
Michael Horton
Dr. Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary in California. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Modern Reformation magazine and White Horse Inn. Dr. Horton is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society and American Academy of Religion.
As we shall see, however, open theism and classical Reformed theology differ considerably on this question, at least in practice if not always in theory. We will follow the same outline as above in our comparison and contrast.
Here are some examples from an article Dr. Horton wrote in 2002 concerning Open Theism:
First, open theism claims to be biblical. But where Reformed theology recognizes Scripture alone as the source of theology, while experience, reason, and tradition are treated as significant influences, open theists adopt the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral, with Scripture as the first but not sole normative source.36 In a previous work Pinnock reasoned, ‘Just as Augustine came to terms with ancient Greek thinking, so we are making peace with the culture of modernity.’ Yet one would be hard-pressed to find Augustine sharing Pinnock’s assessment of such direct dependence. Pinnock writes, ‘As an open theist, I am interested in such authors as Hegel, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Whitehead because they make room in their thinking for ideas like change, incarnation and divine suffering. . . .
It is no secret that there are strong similarities between process thought and open theism: both process and open theists have repeatedly acknowledged these. However, they have also acknowledged important differences even in these two works that we are citing. Among these differences, for instance, is the essential Creator- creature distinction.
One of the marks of a strong theory is that it is able to make sense of the greatest amount of appropriate data. Open theism has still not provided a serious exegetical account of the passages that clearly indicate that God does not change, does not repent, does not depend on the world for his hap- piness, and passages that do affirm God’s knowledge of and sovereignty over all contingencies of history to the last detail. On the other hand, an analogical account provides a paradigm in which both may be seriously af- firmed without resolving the mystery in a false dilemma. Hellenistic or Hebrew? Open Theism and Reformed Theological Method
I invite you to read the entire article.
Justin Taylor
Dr. Justin Taylor is Executive Vice President of Book Publishing at Crossway. He also served as Managing Editor of the ESV Study Bible. Dr. Taylor is a co-editor of the book Beyond The Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (Crossway Books, 2003). He also blogs at Between Two Worlds.
Paul Helseth
Dr. Paul Helseth is Professor of Christian Thought at the University of Northwestern in Minnesota.
He wrote the chapter on The Trustworthiness of God and the Foundation of Hope in Beyond The Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity (Crossway Books, 2003). He also wrote the chapter titled God Causes All Things and responses to other scholars in the book Four Views on Divine Providence (Zondervan Academic, 2011).
Here are a few of Dr. Helseth’ thoughts about Open Theism from an article he wrote in 2001.
Open theists insist that the perceived tension between the omniscience of God and the freedom of man can be resolved only by redefining the precise nature of God’s omniscience. Genuine human freedom and the omniscience of God can be reconciled, they argue, only when we acknowledge that there are some things that even an omniscient God simply cannot know. While God can know all true propositions about the past and present and can, on the basis of that knowledge and his knowledge of his own future activity, know a good deal about future reality, his omniscience does not extend to the details of future reality in an exhaustive fashion. Why? The following quo- tation by Gregory Boyd articulates the typical answer. ‘In the Christian view God knows all reality—everything there is to know. But,’ Boyd argues, ‘to assume He knows ahead of time how every person is going to freely act assumes that each person’s free activity is already there to know—even before he freely does it! But it’s not. If we have been given freedom, we create the reality of our decisions by making them. And until we make them, they don’t exist. Thus, in my view at least, there simply isn’t anything to know until we make it there to know. So God can’t foreknow the good or bad decisions of the people He creates until He creates these people and they, in turn, create their decisions.’
Since the future is composed in part of possibilities having to do with the free decisions of responsible moral agents, openness theologians conclude that God’s knowledge cannot extend to the minute details of future reality simply because the free decisions yet to be made do not constitute a part of what can be known presently. Like square circles or two-sided triangles, future free decisions cannot be known because they simply do not exist; they do not constitute a part of knowable reality.
If nothing else, when we consider the pain and suffering that exist in the world in light of the willingness of the God of Open Theism to coerce the will in order to bring about states of affairs that he really wants to bring about, it becomes immediately clear that the God of Open Theism cannot be trusted. For he is little more than a cosmic sugar daddy whose affections are now hot and now cold, but never constant. He wants loving relationships with his creatures and to that end he reigns through a ‘sovereignty of love’ rather than a ‘sovereignty of control.’ But in the end his reign is administered only haltingly, for not all of his creatures are the recipients of his intervening mercies. While openness theologians would have us believe that the Open view of evil offers ‘a psychological, as well as theological, benefit,’ those with more traditional inclinations have their doubts. After all, there is nothing particularly reassuring about a being who could prevent the pain and suffering that he claims to hate but he does not prevent either because he is not a good enough chess player, or because he is, at bottom, indifferent to the plight of his creatures. On Divine Ambivalence: Open Theism and the Problem of Particular Evils (2001)
I invite you to read the entire article.
Phillip Cary
Dr. Phillip Cary is Professor of Philosophy at Eastern University and Scholar in Residence at the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University. He is an Augustine scholar.
Dr. Cary is one of five authors included in the book God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views (IVP Academic, 2017). Cary took the Classic View, William Hasker took the Open Theism View and Thomas Jay Oord took an Essential Kenosis View. The other two authors are William Lane Craig (Molinist View) and Stephen Wykstra (Skeptical Theism View).
Thomas Jay Oord’s solution to the problem of evil looks to me like one of those theodicies that explains too much. Instead of a reason why God permits evils, he gives us a reason why God can’t prevent them. And it’s not a hidden reason but one fully accessible to us, based on a firm understanding of God’s ‘nature of love.’ This is a rationalism more ambitious than Leibniz’s.
It also attributes a startling powerlessness to the divine nature of love. In place of the voluntary self-limitation that many kenotic theologies see in God, Word posits an essential kenosis, a necessary self-giving that forever limits God in very substantial ways, implying among other things his inability to interfere with human freedom and agency or the law-like regularity of creation. Like process theology, this gives us a theodicy that plays by the rules of naturalism–which is reason enough, in my view, to find it questionable. But what is more serious, it attributes to God less power than belongs to anyone who can pick up a stick and swing it at the head of a man about to rape a little girl in the woods. I h ave never seen what is worth preserving about the freedom and agent of such a man, and neither can I see anything loving or ‘self-giving’ in someone who would refuse to pick up the stick and swing it. Oord himself admits that he can’t imagine Jesus, the exemplar of kenosis, failing to intervene. So precisely at this point the concept of kenosis fails to explain why God cannot prevent evils, and Oord must turn instead to the odd notion of an omnipresent spirit that cannot accomplish what anyone with a healthy human body is capable of doing: putting up resistance to the free agency of a criminal to do something horrible to a child.
The problem can be generalized. If God can’t rescue a little girl, how can he redeem the world? There is no point praying ‘How long, O Lord?’ to a God who cannot prevent evils. As Oord argues, this is a God we cannot blame or accuse or find culpable. But it is also a God who cannot give us a story in which we can cry out for a final defeat of evils. That, I think,, is the price we pay for a theodicy that gets God completely off the hook. He is not responsible for evils, not even for permitting them. But that’s because he is metaphysically incapable of putting a stop to them. Better to join Job, I’d say, and hold God responsible: keep him on the hook, and keep complaining like the psalmist until kingdom come.
William Hasker does the contributors to this book a favor buy situating his theodicy in relation to a range of other possible theodicies. His approach is more modest than Oord’s and wears its unsatisfactoriness more on its sleeve, which I appreciate. You can see what it does and doesn’t aim to accomplish by comparison with other theodicies. Hasker wants to do more than merely block the inference to God’s nonexistence, but less than explain why God permits this or that particular evil. He wants to understand something of at the place of evil in the world by identifying a ‘general policy’ that justifies God in permitting the kind of evils that we see, without identifying ‘special benefits’ that would constitute the greater goods that give God reasons to permit particular evils. So he does not tell a particular story but sketches broad structures of the natural and human worlds that make a place for many kinds of evil.
A deeper reason I am not satisfied with Hasker’s theodicy stems from a key feature of open theism: the belief that God takes risks. If he takes risks, then sometimes he loses. On this view, as I suggested in my contribution, he is like a general who is sure to win the war in the end but cannot possibly do so without casualties. And the casualties are what Oord would call ‘ genuine evil’ and I would call ‘gratuitous evil.’ They are particular evils that serve no particular redeeming purpose; they are lasting and irreversible defeats for God. I think we should hold God responsible for making sure that in the end–seen in the light of the happy ending of the story of the world–there are no evils of that kind. God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views
Thomas R. Schreiner
Dr. Schreiner is the James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation and Professor of Biblical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also the Associate Dean of the School of Theology.
Christians have always taught that God foresees what his people will suffer, and that he is sovereign over this world. Recently, however, ‘open theism’ has called this truth into question. Open theists argue that God does not and cannot know the future free will decisions of human beings. If he did, they claim, then human beings would not be truly free. In their view, human beings cannot be free if God knows in advance what we will choose to do. They see another advantage in their paradigm, namely, God is not responsible for the suffering we experience, for he did not know or ordain that it would occur. It is fair to say that open theists think that one of the great advantages of this new paradigm is that it solves the problem of evil.
Why is this new movement dangerous and harmful? It is pernicious precisely because it removes the sovereignty of God from suffering. We may not understand why we are suffering, and we know that the pain in this world is staggering. None- theless, we do not surrender what the scriptures teach. Our God is good and he is sovereign. Our God cares and he is in control. Our God loves and he reigns. Our Father works everything for good to those who love him and who are called according to his gracious purpose (Rom 8:28). The judge of all the earth always does what is right (Gen 18:25). Our trust in him and love for him will not be increased if we surrender his lordship and kingship. Such an option may be tempt- ing to some, but it is unbiblical and pastorally irresponsible. Sovereignty, Suffering, and Open Theism
Other Scholars
Here is a list of several other scholars you can research and read to learn more about their oppositional view to Open Theism.
- Paul Helm
- Benjamin H. Arbour
- Richard L. Mayhue
- Thomas P. Flint
- Douglas Huffman
- Luis Scott
- Ardel Caneday
- Robert L. Thomas
Articles of Interest
Is Open Theism Still a Factor 10 Years after ETS Vote?
What Should Our Conclusion Be About Open Theism?
‘What’s Wrong with Open Theism?’
In Conclusion
My hope and prayer is that this series has been helpful in bringing to light (exposing) the dangers of Open Theism.
I leave anyone flirting with Open Theism with this powerful warning from the Apostle Paul.
I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. Galatians 1:6-9
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Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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